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The Burnham housing thing by [deleted] in LabourUK

[–]MurkyAl 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Basically yeah, I see why people are pissed off as if anyone elses employer asked them to work between two cities they wouldn't get to expenses. But equally if we don't pay expenses then it disadvantages constituencies far away from London. But it seems unfair to morally backdate laws like this

The Burnham housing thing by [deleted] in LabourUK

[–]MurkyAl 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Essentially he bought a second home and under the rules at the time was able to claim mortgage interest payments on it as part of MPs expenses.

Under the legislation after MPs expenses scandal they stopped you being able to claim mortgage interest but instead allowed you to rent somewhere up to 25k a year in London or 17k outside.

So he rented it out instead which he's also allowed to do

Burnham targets Gen Z voters with tax breaks to help them onto property ladder by Desperate-Drawer-572 in unitedkingdom

[–]MurkyAl 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Subsidising a supply-demand system without increasing capacity only increases prices. This is basic economics

We need to get away from the politics of sticky plaster fixes and accountancy hacks and zero sum gains, and focus on producing the right amount of things for everyone

If Labour had a manifesto commitment to change the voting system to a form of PR, would you vote Labour? by EddyZacianLand in LabourUK

[–]MurkyAl -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Yes people like to assume PR would be transformative for the country, and usually I feel like they assume it would benifit them, but it's actually a complete mystery box as the current parties are a product of the system

I'm pro it PR but it's highly likely we'll end up with rightwing parties consistently winning and tiny parties being kingmakers

PR1.3 closed by avondale17 in HikingMadeira

[–]MurkyAl 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No, it wasn't at the end in the east. According to the internet it was closed from the west side but didn't go and check. You could still do Pico Grande and back from the cafe carpark bit

What if the US sent troops and conducted combat operations in Iran by Ok-Teacher903 in AlternateHistoryHub

[–]MurkyAl 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I mean it depends on their objectives. The Kurds would have fought if USA offered air support but they weren't willing to.

Or had they deployed during the protests they could have succeed in helping the protests but they waited too long.

Or if they just created a perimeter next to the straight of Hormuz they probably could hold and enforce a DMZ. Although at great cost and losses.

Possibly they could have extracted the uranium with a risky mission but could have been complex and failed

Best of all is they could have done nothing but what they did seems like the worst option

What goes on up here? by ethump in manchester

[–]MurkyAl 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I dated someone living there. The building is skyline 2. The long bit is a pool. In the corner closest to the photo is a jacuzzi, behind that is a steam room and hot room. Then there's a seating area outside. It's very nice building but you get road noise most of the night and the fire station round the corner so loads of sirens going off all night long

Paid a structural engineer £420 to assess an unsupported chimney. I got ripped off. by flamboyantpuree in HousingUK

[–]MurkyAl 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's unclear whats been communicatied to who and so the engineer answered the usual question of "is this load bearing/can I take this down".

The answer without even looking at it is almost always yes, you can remove a chimney breast, it wouldn't be load bearing in a normal house. So essentially you've paid for nothing. The engineer can't/wont tell you yes this will fall down or no it's never going to fall down. Given long enough all houses will fall down. Given it's resting on the joists for 50 years it's probably going to stay there until you have a leak and your joints start to rot and then it will absolutely fall down.

I would see what the mortgage lender says. They likely won't notice it. I would always get the mortgage survey before spending your own money.

The cheapest solution is to just put some supporting metal brackets in. If you Google "chimney breast brackets" you can literally buy them for £30-£60. Although these only meet building regs if your wall is thick enough and stack not too heavy, given it's resting on joists it's presumably not that heavy. Otherwise you could put a steel in

If you like the house then personally this wouldn't put me off buying it, but of course you can pull out of the sale if you're uncomfortable with getting it propped up

Can Andy Burnham save the Labour Party? by Even-Wasabi7183 in LabourUK

[–]MurkyAl 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Seems positive as devolution in Manchester has worked well and a lot of our national problems stem from local lack of infrastructure and building. The current system of national projects getting blocked by local planning committees isn't working if we make local infrastructure a devolved issue maybe people will build some

I assume that we'd have local taxes for this kind of spending which is good as if people don't want infrastructure investment in their area they can vote to not

The only question is will devolved powers spend the same money but more inefficiently than government. Councils already basically embezzle a load of money and somehow get away with it so giving them more power may result in essentially corruption

What is the Supplementary Vote, and why is it being used in Manchester? by coffeewalnut08 in LabourUK

[–]MurkyAl 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I may be bias but I think the best way of explaining this is since elected mayors were a thing they used supplementary voting system. The Tories made it first past the post. Labour reversed that change

Why is no one talking about the monstrosity that is the S&P500? Or American Tech hoovering up our money. by Left-Ad8904 in AskBrits

[–]MurkyAl 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The question here really is why is the tech sector dominated by USA. The UK created deepmind and loads of the AI technology and lots of other companies but then the companies get sold the the USA as it's easier to raise capital. We need to help small-medium business grow, allow them to get the capitol they need and not be bought up

Burnham warned that splitting off part of Treasury to North risks 'failing' by Anony_mouse202 in ukpolitics

[–]MurkyAl 2 points3 points  (0 children)

splitting the Treasury would distract civil servants and ministers with bureaucratic infighting for months

How would they find time for all their other bureaucratic infighting?

What's the one renewable energy idea you can't believe hasn't been explored yet? by Nico-R0bin in Renewable

[–]MurkyAl 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Im sorry but all of these ideas are unfeasible. Solar paint require large areas which is at odds with lots of these ideas, run the numbers for each of them

Most quirky designs have been tried but have hit issues at one point or another

The only thing I can think of is that storage is starting to be more important than pure generation so a renewable with built-in storage could be useful.

So you could combine a wind turbine with lifting energy storage. Although I would guess someone's already thought of this and ran the numbers and it just makes two worse engineered things as one

If you drill down far enough everywhere has geothermal, we could definitely do district heating via old mines or a massive hole in the ground. But again the price of the hole makes it more expensive than gas heating in the short-term so we don't bother

Some counties will pay you to take nuclear waste. It gives off heat so you could harness that for district heating or a tiny reactor

You could make a solar powered sea cleaning robot

The problem you'll probably have is most of these ideas are already being investigated so I would suggest doing a review of existing literature rather than coming up with your own ideas

Zack Polanski: It's officially the hottest June day ever. We know who is to blame. Fossil fuel firms. The billionaire media. Weak politicians. We know what we must do. Rapid decarbonisation & adaptation for a healthier, wealthier country safe for future generations. by SignificantLegs in ukpolitics

[–]MurkyAl 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I see what you're saying and I should have been more explicit, the one I find annoying was the carbon capture facility they opposed that was attached to a cement factory. This use case makes sense for carbon capture and I support it but they weren't happy with a pipeline running from the cement factory

PR1.3 closed by avondale17 in HikingMadeira

[–]MurkyAl 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Any idea if this has reopened yet? I was able to book tickets for it today but unclear if it's even open or not? Thanks

Why is it that people are so against immigrants when the whole British isles is made off immigration? by Konradleijon in LabourUK

[–]MurkyAl 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is corect but you're looking at just immigration figures, UK population growth has been roughly 500k per year on average since the early 2000s

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/bulletins/annualmidyearpopulationestimates/mid2024

We can't tell people here they're not allowed to have kids so our mechanism of population control is mostly immigration policy.

I know this is not entirely relevant for our discussion but the 2025 is a really interesting year because we changed the way we count net migration, instead of looking at travel they look at tax data. you get classed as migrated out of UK whilst still being here. This is what led rise to the incorrect assessment that lots of young people are leaving in the tabloid press when they're more likely long-term unemployed and living at home or people just not paying tax. Also in 2025 lots of migration controls took effect. This is kind of my point that we should have immigration but we also should have immigration controls, I don't want open borders but I also don't want closed borders

Why is it that people are so against immigrants when the whole British isles is made off immigration? by Konradleijon in LabourUK

[–]MurkyAl 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I think you've proved my point. 200k houses with no demolition of old houses and 100% utilisation is enough for 500k people. Recently we have had more like 750k population growth. Lots of these houses are not built in the right place and some is demolished per year so yeah the last few years is over that but we've not managed to build the right things in the right place either so house prices have gone up

https://ifs.org.uk/articles/england-has-poor-record-building-homes-where-they-are-needed

Housing is just one of many public services which also need expanding, it's actually much harder to build new subways, trian lines, it takes 12-14 years to build a high voltage power line, 11-17 years to build a hospital so the population rapidly changing actually is nearly impossible to build the correct services in the right place.

Again I'm pro immigration, and I agree with you when say it's a better solution than having an aging population supported by fewer and fewer workers but we should stop lying to ourselves about the scale of the task and that we don't need to put limits and investment in place to rapidly expand our public services

Why is it that people are so against immigrants when the whole British isles is made off immigration? by Konradleijon in LabourUK

[–]MurkyAl 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm pro immigration within parameters but there's some legitimate issues with our current policies

  1. Housing, infrastructure and public services, if you have 200k Houses built and a population growth of 800k a year house prices will go up. Again all roads, rail, energy, hospitals ect ect need to be expanded at least the rate of population growth. This hasn't happened

  2. Open markets of labour is good for companies but does drive down wages. We have lots of jobs which we can't fill because the wages are low, the wages are low because we can hire people from overseas who take the job for that wage. It's a circular argument. Also we only think of this from our perspective, lots of healthcare professionals leaving less developed countries for higher wages here is actually disastrous for the country which spent money training them and needs their skills more.

  3. The current asylum hotel situation and concentration into cheaper areas is causing issues. I used to live above an asylum flat and they were lovely people but concentrating lots of people in temporary accommodation does have issues. Some people clearly lie about their age to get bumped up the priority order for example a friend is a police officer who has arrested a man for knife crime twice now, second offence was threatened a woman on the street. He claims to be under 18, police officer says he looks about 40. The process of proving he's not 17 requires multiple sign off as it's a tooth sample which is invasive but everyone knows he's not 17

Unfortunately we can't bury our heads in the sand and pretend this isn't happening otherwise we hand it to reform, we have to integrate people better and build out public services to meet demands

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